Moscardino by Enrico Pea Page A

appeal on Pound’s behalf to the American ambassador, Mrs. Luce, adding another string of names. It would seem that the Italian writers cared more about the poet’s fate than his compatriots.
    Vanni was barely twenty at the time (he was born in 1934) and had already published Pound’s Lavoro ed Usura (1954), Tre Cantos (1954), and Confucio: Studio Integrale e L’Asse che non vacilla (1955). He then, with some difficulty, got permission from Pound’s U.S. publisher, James Laughlin of New Directions, at Pound’s instigation, to publish Moscardino in 1956; Pea’s text, translated by John Drummond, served as introduction. The little volume was printed by the prince of printers, Giovanni Mardersteig, at his Stamperia Valdonega in Verona in one thousand copies of which perhaps one hundred were sold. Pound’s own record had to be “aired” on October 26, 1941, under the title “Books and Music”:
    So a few weeks ago Monotti sez: ever read Pea’s Moscardino? So I read it, and for the first time in your colloquitor’s life he wuz
tempted to TRANSLATE a novel, and did so. Ten years ago I had seen Enrico Pea passin’ along the sea front and Gino [Saviotti] sez: It’s a novelist. Having seen and known POLLEN IDEN, some hundreds, or probably thousands I was not interested in its being a novelist. But the book must be good or I wouldn’t be more convinced of the fact AFTER having translated it, than I was before. Of course my act was impractical so far as you are concerned. I haven’t the ghost of an idea how I am going to get the manuscript to America or get it published. Pea has never made a cent out of the original. Well neither had Joyce nor Eliot when I started trying to git someone to print ’em.
    What’s it like? Well, if Tom Hardy had been born a lot later, and lived in the hills up back the Lunigiana, which is down along the coast here, and if Hardy hadn’t writ what ole Fordie used to call that “sort of small town paper journalese.” And if a lot of other things, includin’ temperament, had been different, and so forth . . . that might have been something like Pea’s writin’ — which I repeat is good writing — and was back in 1921 when Moscardino was printed. Moscardino is the name of the kid who is tellin’ about his grandpop, a nickname like Buck.
    As soon as the barriers are down I shall be sendin’ a copy along for the enlightenment of the American public.
    In the meantime, if anyone wants to learn how to write
Italian let ’em read the first chapter of Forastiero [ Il forestiero, Firenze 1937] or the couple of pages on the bloke who had been twenty years in jail. This is just announcin’ that Italy has a writer, and it is some time since I told anybody that ANY country on earth had a writer. Like Confucius, knocked ’round and done all sorts of jobs. Writes like a man who could make a good piece of mahogany furniture.
    That furniture got immortalized in Canto 80:
    [. . .]
    reminding me of the Bank of Egypt and the gold bars in old Menelik’s palace and the mahogany counters and desk work in the branch in, was it, Alexandria put there by Pea (Enrico)
    [. . .]
    In Pisa, Pound must have remembered his conversations with Pea. Perhaps he had, at the time, encouraged him to write about his life in Egypt. Vita in Egitto was published in 1949.
    I don’t know what other books by Pea Pound read at Saint Elisabeth’s. There’s an amusing letter in which Pound informs Pea that “William Rufus, King of England, un fiol di canass (son of a bitch), used
to swear by the ‘volto sacro di Lucca.’ Can you tell me if the famous crucifix is still in Lucca? Vultus Sanctus, ‘scolpito da Nicedemo.’ I don’t know at the moment if I can use it, but perhaps there are some jokes or some local anecdote, like that donkey in Verona about which the Rev. Cav. Dott. Alesssandrro